No one orchestrates surprise better than Apple.
The fever of excitement surrounding the launch of a new Apple product is the envy of every other consumer company in the world. Rumors, gossip, and eager anticipation create a potent mix for marketing.
But professional users are different. The shattering echoes from the death of Final Cut Server and Final Cut Studio (3) last summer are still reverberating throughout the industry.
The unnecessary, and unheralded, death of both these products killed businesses overnight, destroyed relationships, and alienated an industry. It wasn’t Final Cut Pro X that a caused the outcry, it was what died in its birth.
Professionals are not consumers – we are running companies, meeting payroll, and creating products using Apple tools.
THE CASE OF THE MACPRO TOWER
Two months ago, Lou Borella sent me an email asking if I had any insight on the MacPro. I told him that I had just had a meeting with Apple where I asked them that question and they declined to answer. (This is not surprising because, as we all know, Apple does not comment on unannounced products.)
Lou told me he was going to start a Facebook petition to ask Apple to clarify its plans for the MacPro. This is Apple’s last remaining tower computer and a daily workhorse throughout the creative world. I told him that he could do what he wanted, but that Apple does not pay attention to petitions or respond to discussion groups on social media.
Still, he set up the page – https://www.facebook.com/MacProsPlease – and I tweeted about it.
This last week, he caught the eye of Gizmodo – along with other Mac rumor sites – and his page exploded. More than 7,000 likes as I write this and adding more every minute.
There are two ways to view this: as a forlorn attempt to get Apple’s attention, or as a way to show that the MacPro is still relevant in today’s mobile society. This could go either way.
Apple locks its hardware plans LONG before any product is announced. The decision on the future life, if any, of the MacPro was made, probably, last year. Most likely, earlier than that. So, Apple already knows what it intends to do.
For those of us running businesses using a hardware tool that can not be sourced from any other vendor, it would be very, very helpful to know if it has a future life.
MY TAKE
Here’s my thought: Apple hasn’t upgraded the MacPro since 2010 because it feels the market for it is too small. Combine that with Apple’s philosophy that it doesn’t pre-announce products and you have a perfect stew of insecurity for creative types.
But Apple’s philosophy doesn’t prohibit it from pre-announcing the death of a product. If sales are already so low as to not justify upgrading the MacPro, then there is no significant harm to Apple’s business to saying that the MacPro will be “End of Lifed” by such-and-such a date.
Conversely, if the market for the MacPro is large enough to justify updating it, there is no harm in announcing that the MacPro will be updated by such-and-such a quarter because the MacPro market is far smaller than any other computer hardware segment that Apple serves. Neither announcement would have any significant financial impact on Apple, but would be a SIGNIFICANT benefit to creative professionals planning their hardware purchases.
APPLE WANTS TO KEEP US INFORMED
In my recent meetings with Apple, just before NAB last April, they told me that they wanted to give creative professionals a heads-up with where they were going with Final Cut Pro X. This was why they were having on-the-record meetings and sharing up-coming features with me. (You can read my entire report of that meeting here.)
Keeping us informed is a GREAT idea!!!
I sent an email to my contacts at Apple to see if they want to comment on this. I’ll let you know if I learn anything.
It has been obvious for the last couple of years that creative professionals no longer make up the bulk of Apple’s business – and that’s fine with me, I wish Apple every success. But because we are responsible for creating the content that Apple displays so wonderfully on all its consumer devices, it would be really helpful if Apple could share with us an outline of their future hardware plans for those tools that consumers will never buy and professionals can’t live without.
I mean, can you imagine what it would be like creating movies for an iPad on a Windows system?
Let me know what you think.
Larry
P.S. If you want to stay informed on what I learn from Apple, as well as the world of audio and video, please subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter: www.larryjordan.biz/newsletter/
39 Responses to Does the MacPro Have A Future?
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Tim Ryan says:
May 25, 2012 at 1:42 pm
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May 25, 2012 at 2:31 pm
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nickeditor says:
May 25, 2012 at 2:35 pm
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May 25, 2012 at 3:07 pm
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May 25, 2012 at 3:32 pm
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May 25, 2012 at 5:13 pm
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May 25, 2012 at 5:18 pm
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May 25, 2012 at 5:20 pm
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May 25, 2012 at 7:33 pm
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Martin C says:
May 25, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Newer Comments →Larry-
Great article, and interesting thoughts. I definitely agree with you, and hadn’t yet thought of your reasons for Apple sharing this. I just don’t see them doing that, although I’d love to know when/if (hopefully) a new MacPro is going to be released.
My system hard drive failed last week and it was relatively easy to fix via installing a new drive and time machine. However, I kept thinking during this process how much of a pain it would be to to this on an iMac. The Mac Pro has instructions inside the door on how to install more RAM (MacPro 1,1). Apple seems to be moving away from this, and in a sense locking in their computers so you are not able to alter it in any way.
Tim
Thanks for these sensible words.
“Professionals are not consumers – we are running companies, meeting payroll, and creating products using Apple tools.”
I can’t say it better
Thank’s Larry, your voice gets higher than ours and that helps.
(I think we’re all concerned about if Apple decides it is not a company for professionals. It still hurts what they did with the Xserve).
Larry.
Regardless of what they say to you Apple has always treated pros as consumers and always will. What they did with FCPX was unforgivable and should have been a wake up call for those deluded into thinking Apple was interested in the pro.
What is particularly galling is the amount of cash Apple has amassed, while their core customer base is deliberately ignored. They don’t seem to understand that the pro is the most important customer they have. The pros are the movers and shakers, the trend setters and the hipsters, and they are the most loyal. Mobile phone buyers are the most fickle and unreliable. Does Apple -really- want to alienate its most vocal advocates??
To get a sense of how bad things are go to http://www.Apple.com/pro.
The page has been abandoned. The 3 year old ‘New’ MacPro is listed along with Logic Studio, and the last pro feature was put up in August 2009.
No, I’m sorry, Apple does not want us to be informed, because they have nothing to say.
Mark my words, we have a numbers guy in charge now, not a visionary. It may not happen tomorrow or even next week but Apple WILL fail if they continue on this course. How do I know? Because after a decade of promoting Apple I’m thinking of either switching or building a Hackintosh so I can get my job done.
Good points, especially in regards to your take on the limited downsides to Apple sharing info on what they’re doing with their towers.
For those tied to Apple hardware and software for their money making tools, this must not feel like the era of commodity computing, huh? At least if you run Avid or Adobe software you aren’t completely screwed over, even if you run on Apple hardware today. This is the #1 problem with turning the keys over to one vendor. I thought we learned this lesson long ago.
Thanks for posting this, Larry. It’s incredibly difficult for us to make business decisions with Apple’s track record of keeping us all in the dark. We’re really not feeling too warm towards Apple in light of the way they handled information release about XServe and FCPX. We’re hoping they’ll do it differently this time around.
Tim Ryan – the instructions for installing more RAM on the iMac are actually printed on the bottom of the pedestal. But more to your point, that doesn’t give it more HDD slots, PCIe slots, or eSATA ports.
The main reason for going this long without a refresh to the Mac Pro is not that the market is too small, it’s that there were no new compatable Xeon CPU’s from Intel launched last year due to extensive production delays. Otherwise I think we would have already heard of the Mac Pro’s retirement a la XServe style announcement. Only weeks ago the capable CPUs were launched by intel, but word on the street is they are still low in volume availability. ( take with a grain of salt, I don’t really know )
And as far as when we’ll know the answer to the MacPro’s future, it might be at, or soon after WWDC. Patterns in Apple’s actions seem to point an entire Mac lineup refresh might happen at all about the same time. (Macs are now classified as devices to Apple; increased development speed of OS X.) This would likely include the Mac Pro. And when they all are delivered, they will likely ship with 10.8, as is the current trend with iOS and the iPhone. That is, new hardware means new software to take advantage of the new hardware’s new awesome features.
Another point I ponder is of the rumors of HiDPI & Retina Mac displays in the pipeline. If this happens across the Mac lineup this summer, including the iMac, then the Mac Pro launch or announcement could likely be in sync with the iMac’s since they rely on the same cinema display panels, with of course a new batch of GPUs to handle them. But then the wild card could be that the next gen iMac might be the replacement to the MacPro in Apple’s eyes now that we have Thunderbolt, but I don’t suspect that will truly be the case until Thunderbolt 2.0 debuts. And based on what I’ve seen on the webs, that doesn’t seem to be on the intel roadmap for the next few years. Also, while GPUs are fast becoming more important then many-core CPUs, and FCP X is a prime example of that, i’m not yet convinced we’ve crossed the transition point just yet. But I’m just making educated guesses. Only Apple truly knows what is in store for the future. ( No pun intended. )
However, before we cry that the sky is falling, keep on mind that many of Apple’s own employees likely depend on the power and utility of the Mac Pro. They are still very much the “trucks” of the computing world. And Apple programers, the Pro Apps team, and their in-house production teams ( if they have any, which I suspect they do ) all still need trucks too.
WWDC is June 11. Hold on to your butts.
There’s one key fact missing from this analysis. Intel only recently made available new server class processors. The Xeon E5 chips are needed for dual processor configurations. Those chips were only released in March. Dell & HP only started announcing products based on those chips last month.
That said, it still is disheartening to see Dell & HP releasing work stations with those chips while Apple has not. I am still keeping my hopes up. But if we see iMacs & MacBook Pros updated to the Ivy Bridge platform with no Mac Pro upgrade, I will have to rethink my computer purchase I’ve been planning for months.
Yes I can imagine how it is to create movies for iPad on a Windows system. I have been doing so for the past year. And it is a lot faster compared to a Mac nowadays, especially with GPU accellerated software. As for the software, once you are running say Adobe CS or Avid, the only difference you will notice is the position of the apple key vs the control key. If that is too much to handle you should consider other career opportunities.
The irony is that once upon a time, the creatives all used Macs and what they produced was being viewed mainly on Windows PCs, now creatives may be switching to PCs and making content largely for viewing on iPads…